Human RightsWatch welcomes the report of the OHCHR on the state of human rights in Yemen. We also welcome the Council’s draft resolution on Yemen, which prioritizes the need for credible and impartial investigations into serious violations of the past and the release of all persons arbitrarily detained. We ask that the Human Rights Council take this resolution one step further by requesting that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights provide an oral update on Yemen’s progress in June 2012.
Yemeni authorities have taken several significant steps toward reform since the Council’s last session. Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh has formally transferred power to his deputy, Abd Rabu Mansor Hadi. Yemen’s cabinet has invited the OHCHR to open a country office. The new government also has pledged to establish a National Human Rights Commission in accordance with the Paris principles within one year, and to empanel a national commission to conduct transparent and independent investigations, in conformance with international standards, into past violations.
Yet key challenges remain, including how to serve justice for crimes of the past. Yemen’s parliament in January 2012 granted complete amnesty to former President Saleh and near-complete amnesty to those who served with him. This immunity violates Yemen’s international obligations to investigate serious human rights crimes such as war crimes, torture and crimes against humanity, as the High Commissioner has noted. It also contravenes UN Security Council Resolution 2014, which states that “all those responsible for violence, human rights violations and abuses should be held accountable.” In addition to denying victims the right to see perpetrators held to account, the law risks inviting further abuses by fostering a climate of impunity.
In addition, President Hadi has barely begun restructuring the security forces involved in unlawful attacks on peaceful protesters and other civilians, including units commanded by relatives of former President Saleh, who remains a vocal presence inside Yemen. Armed confrontations persist in pockets of the country, and armed actors including the renegade First Armored Division and the militant group Ansar al-Sharia, use children to guard checkpoints and patrol streets.
Yemeni human rights defenders and the new human rights minister allege that security forces continue to detain without charge many protesters, fighters and others apprehended in 2011. Human Rights Watch in February interviewed four former detainees whom security forces had held without charge and incommunicado despite the change of power, as well as relatives of four others they believed the security forces had forcibly disappeared.
Yemen is now at a critical crossroads. Frequent reporting on Yemen’s progress in protecting human rights can bolster Yemeni reform efforts and heighten the relevance of the Council’s and the OHCHR’s engagement in that country. Human Rights Watch urges the Council to request an interim, oral update on Yemen from the High Commissioner’s office at the 20th session of the Council, while awaiting the next progress report requested in the draft resolution for it 21st session.
